Choice Privileges - "Quality Inn" - Crescent City, CA

I stayed at this property recently and was not impressed. This was my first QI stay in quite some time (I have mostly Comfort stays).

It was my understanding QI is a better brand than Comfort and the properties should have more amenities?

I thought Choice Hotels went in a "quality" hierarchy:

Clarion - best
Quality - better
Comfort - good
Sleep - okay
Rodeway - budget
Econo - ultra budget

This QI was an old motel with a stucco facade placed on it, outside room entry, no fitness room, ice machines were all broken, soda machine broken, horrible breakfast, poorly landscaped exterior, and not very clean at all. To top it all off, the employees running the place were dressed in jeans and generic polo shirts and the lobby smelled horrible. The one guy was very, very friendly. Probably a little too friendly.

The rooms weren't terribly clean (my socks were very dirty after walking around the room), the towels were gray, the sheets had obviously been washed many many times (scratchy), and I didn't examine the rest of the bedding much but would venture it wasn't really very clean. The floor in the bathroom really, really needed to be mopped. It was pretty noisy, the heater looked like a relic from the 70's but worked fine (as long as nobody was smoking outside the room), and the place just had a creepy vibe to it.

I would rate them this way:

Top: Cambria Suites and Comfort Suites

Better: Sleep Inn, Quality Inn & Suites, Comfort Inn & Suites

OK: Comfort Inn and Clarion

Usually disappointing: Quality, Rodeway, Econo

although the Rodeway Inn in Sedona is quite nice.

I would rate them this way:

Top: Cambria Suites and Comfort Suites

Better: Sleep Inn, Quality Inn & Suites, Comfort Inn & Suites

OK: Comfort Inn and Clarion

Usually disappointing: Quality, Rodeway, Econo

although the Rodeway Inn in Sedona is quite nice.

+1

AFAIK, the main requirement to qualify as a Quality Inn is having an attached restaurant.

I generally find the following to be the hierarchy:

Clarion Collection (usually have unique branding)
Clarion and Comfort Suites
Comfort and Quality Inns
Sleep Inn
Rodeway/Econo

I generally find that ranking them by brand name is useless.

I have seen some nice Rodeway Inns and some horrid Clarions.

You're asking for trouble if you choose a Choice hotel based solely on brand, without reading any reviews anywhere. THere's just too much variation. There are good and lousy Quality Inns, there are good and lousy Comfort Inns, there are good and lousy Clarions, there are good and lousy Rodeway Inns, etc.

If you try to rank them on brand consistency, you'll realize the problem. Sleep Inn might come out on top, simply because they tend te be new builds rather than conversions?

I don't see why anyone would expect a hotel that's ranked 16 of 19:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g60944-d84651-Reviews-Quality_Inn_Suites_Redwood_Coast-Crescent_City_California.html

to be all that good.

(Gosh, even the EconoLodge in town is rates a little bit higher, at 14 of 19!)

I agree with sdsearch. It all depends on each individual property. There is a Sleep Inn in Durham this is nicer than any CI or QI I have ever stayed in.

AFAIK, the main requirement to qualify as a Quality Inn is having an attached restaurant.

I generally find the following to be the hierarchy:

Clarion Collection (usually have unique branding)
Clarion and Comfort Suites
Comfort and Quality Inns
Sleep Inn
Rodeway/Econo

I'm not sure that an attached restaurant is actually a brand standard that you could count on for Quality as I have driven by many exceptions, though often if a resturant isn't attached there is one on the pad.

Some might also place Sleep Inn a bit higher on that list as many are new builds that, while limited service, tend to be decent physical plants.

That all being said, which Choice it really pays to look at the reviews (at least in the US) as there is much variability in what you will find in all of the brands except Cambria. I don't think here is a Cambria more than five or so years old and thus far I have found them to be very good to excellent.

If you try to do a ranking it would be :
- Ascend Collection / Clarion Collection : generally the top but should be some exception
- Clarion / Comfort Suite : generally ok
- Comfort Inn / Quality Inn : no consistency, should be ok... or not
- Econo / Rodeway : budget... should be acceptable or not.

I have found that Quality Inn is more susceptible to variations than the other ChoiceHotel brands. They sometimes take over older hotels without taking the time to upgrade the facility to Quality Inn standards or retrain staff. The Quality Inn by Denver airport is quite nice for an overnight near the airport. The Quality Inn by Seattle airport is terrible and did not even have sufficient toilet paper in the bathrooms (its been 2-3 years since I stayed there and perhaps things have improved since then). Comfort Inns seem to have a more consistent product and service in my experience.

I have found that Quality Inn is more susceptible to variations than the other ChoiceHotel brands. They sometimes take over older hotels without taking the time to upgrade the facility to Quality Inn standards or retrain staff. The Quality Inn by Denver airport is quite nice for an overnight near the airport. The Quality Inn by Seattle airport is terrible and did not even have sufficient toilet paper in the bathrooms (its been 2-3 years since I stayed there and perhaps things have improved since then). Comfort Inns seem to have a more consistent product and service in my experience.

I agree with you.
Anyway, Comfort or Quality, you HAVE to check the reviews...

- Clarion [...] : generally ok
I'd be careful of that one. Clarion AFAIK is their only full-service-ish brand. As such, some of them can be dumps that were absorbed by Choice but couldn't be branded any other way because of it being hotel with a built-in all-day restaurant.

So at the very least it needs as much caution as the actual Hilton brand (within Hilton HHonors), which is also maybe often good (sometimes outright excellent especially some places overseas) but includes some real dumps (in the US and a few other countries). While I might reasonably risk staying at an HGI without checking reviews, I wouldn't risk a Hilton without checking reviews, and neither would I suggest risking a Clarion (at least in the US) without checking reviews.

I would never stay at any choice property without checking reviews. One of the minus- points of their chains is that they are consistently inconsistent. However, one of the plus points is that there are so many properties that there is usually at least one decent property wherever you are headed.